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Studies in

Volume 14 | Issue 1 Article 19

1979 Book Reviews

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Recommended Citation (1979) "Book Reviews," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 14: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol14/iss1/19

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Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. The Co~~ected Letters Thomas and Jane We~sh Car~y~e. Eds. Charles Richard Sanders and Kenneth J. Fielding. Vols. V-VII. Durham, N. C. Duke Univer­ sity Press. 1977. $57.50.

The first four volumes of the Duke- Edition of the Carlyle Letters were greeted in 1970 with "unqualified appro­ bation." The appearance of Volumes V, VI, and VII should eli­ cit not only further approbation but also cheers of encourage­ ment both to the Editors, that they may continue their efforts in the long venture of completing their task, and to the Duke University Press for so handsomely housing this important cor­ respondence. What are we to make of these fresh letters? As before, they are superbly edited. The footnote materials and the Index are accurate and ample. A half-dozen earlier letters, previously unpublished, together with the fragment of a verse play writ­ ten by Jane Welsh in 1824 called "The Rival Brothers," are supplied in an appendix to Volume VII. About a fifth of the nearly six hundred letters have never been published before. There are twenty-seven new ones to Carlyle I smother, one to his father, fourteen to his brothers John and James and sister Jean; and sixteen are to various editors, booksellers, and 264 BOOK REVIEWS publishers. Two are by Jane to Carlyle. If these do not radically alter our understanding of Carlyle they do enrich it, those to his mother, to numerous friends, and to editors like Tait, Napier, Bowring, and Murray. On the whole these three volumes give us a memorable record, first, of the intense devotion, piety, and solidarity of a rural Scottish family and, second, of one gifted man's struggle, in isolation but with the loyal support of his gifted wife, to establish himself as a free-lance writer of periodical and books, in times that were straitened both economically and literarily. Carlyle was now fully aware of his remarkable powers and, basically, he had worked out the message he wished to communicate to his contemporaries, but he had so far been unable to find the proper medium in which to release those powers and convey that message. With all the critical fur that has flown, about Carlyle's dangerous ideas, his clotted style of writing, his irascible temperament, and about his marital relationship with Jane, these letters reveal them both as brilliantly compatible, deeply-loving, large-natured persons. Jane's loyalty to Car­ lyle is matched by his devotion and considerateness to her. Though their life together in that "whinstone castle of Craig­ enputtoch" was no doubt hard and lonely, whenever they were parted they yearned passionately to be together again. The letters they wrote to each other, and to others--never intend­ ed for publication or for open critical inspection--shows them in nothing but an admirable light. Their wit and good humor, the constant support and comfort they gave one another, the range and depth of their , their sharp eye for the ridiculous, their love of anecdote and portraiture--these should dispatch the notion that the Car lyles were marital mis­ fits or mere hypochondriacs, or that Carlyle was characteris- gloomy and Jane stifled and unhappy. was cer- tainly master of the household, but this relationship had sound basis in Scottish mores, and Jane was content, at least at this time, to share and reflect his glory. It is true also that Jane's health suffered a good deal of the time, yet she seems to have suffered more during their visits to London and Edinburgh than when they were snugly settled back among the hills and peat-bogs of their Dunscore Patmos. In short, the impression the letters of these three volumes make on the pres­ ent-day reader is one of vitality, of the courage of two bril­ liant people living, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, in seclusion from a world in turmoil, and preparing at length to reenter it. By 1828 Carlyle had, after their long courtship, won Jane's hand and brought her to Comely Bank; he had slowly and with Book Reviews 265 many doubts committed himself to his profession as a man of letters (a man of many letters, indeed), but the two had found that the literary conditions prevailing in Edinburgh, however attractive the social conditions might be, obliged them to leave Comely Bank and resort to the humbler and more frugal mode of living available to them at craigenputtoch. These volumes contain most of the letters they wrote during, and just after, the Craigenputtoch period, from January 1829 to December 1834. With the first letter of Volume V they have been there six months; with the last of Volume VII they have been in London six months. The letters are lengthy by today's standards, and most are by Carlyle. According to the Editors' calculation Jane wrote very few letters at this time, perhaps as few as nine a year (there are fifty-two here); even in her more prolific later years (1841-1845) she wrote an average of 116 letters a year compared with Carlyle's average during the same period of 169 letters a year. (I, xxv-vi) It should be added that she often wrote postscripts to Carlyle's letters. Furthermore, there is no doubt at all that many of their let­ ters have been lost, or were destroyed, or are not now acces­ sible. Their correspondence with the Bullers has neVer been found; that with Lord Jeffrey seems to have been deliberately destroyed. Except for a few, the letters they wrote to Edward Irving are lost, and there are numerous references within the letters to letters that were written and sent but are still unrecovered: to Carlyle's mother, to John and Alick, to Dr. Badams, William Fraser, even to Goethe. Despite such losses, the extent of which we cannot of course measure, the flow of the correspondence in these volumes gives a sense of completeness. Only when Thomas and Jane write to each other do we have a true correspondence, but when he is writing to others he frequently comments in such detail on the content and nature of the letter he is answering that we still have the sense of reciprocity. Moreover, the Editors have fre­ quently quoted in the footnotes extended relevant passages from letters written to the Carlyles which throw light on the text and which further remind us that they received many many letters as well as wrote them. It was Carlyle, however, who oftenest initiated and sus­ tained the correspondence. Wherever he was throughout his long life he wrote letters regularly, but during these years in the isolation of Craigenputtoch he had an especial need to keep in touch with the outside world of men and ideas. He re­ peatedly endeavored to persuade friends like Mill, the Monta­ gus, Irving, , and Tom Holcroft to send him news and newspapers, books and periodicals, from London or Edinburgh, and he admonished them not to be silent but to write oftener 266 BOOK REVIEWS and more fully about what they were doing and thinking: as in this to Mill, "I beg you will by no means let me lose sight of London, least of all, your circle therein; many things of value for me lie in it, which may yet become of more value •••• You are now my main Voice from that Babel; and I would not have you many days silent,--any day were it possible." (VI, 237, 258) Letters were his telephone by which to keep alive the bond of love with his relatives and close friends, to exchange ideas and opinions of all kinds, to transact business with his editors and publishers, and to open whatever doors of oppor­ tunity might thus come within reach. He regarded it a duty, especially among his family, to maintain a steady interchange of letters, and, again, he was the prime mover, urging them to answer his own letters promptly, to reassure him that they were well, and to supply him with all their news,--in a way which reminds us also how anxious he was to maintain their strong familial ties, however far they might be separated from one another. Moreover, their letters had to be good, that is, full of human detail. To John, living in London, he writes: "I had a commission from the whole kindred to scold you heartily for these all too short Letters; and to charge you with effec­ tive emphasis to mend them •••• Did you see with what eager af­ fection this whole establishment, and the whole Scotsbrig one gathers round a Let tel' of yours; and how mortifying is our dis­ appointment, when we open it, and find the hastiest thinnest piece of work, totally unworthy of our Brother's honest, solid, judicious Pen, and no account whatever of his situation to be got there. n (V, 172) Despite such urging Carlyle had later to exclaim, nO! neve2" write me another dud so long as I live." (V, 272) When John mended his ways, he was rewarded as with a teacher's praise: n ••• your last Letter is no dud, but a real Letter, distinct, considerate, full to the very brim. So should all Letters be in such a case as ours ••• My blessings on a full Letter! n (V, 281) What he really wanted from his family, then, was what he called a letter "from the heart,"--the full­ est expression of the writer's feelings and doings. It was what he aimed for in his own letters to them and, for the ~ost part, to others. However outspoken he may have been in ordi­ nary company his epistolary manner to strangers--even to per­ sons whose position or power posed a threat to him, was uni­ formly polite, even courtly. In this connection there is a significant contrast between his letters to his i~nediate family and those to his publish­ ers. In the former, he was open, honest, and loving--but only within certain limits or, perhaps, under certain conditions, for he had to play the dual role of loving son and head of the house. To his aging parents and to his younger brothers and Book Reviews 267 sisters he was chief counsellor and protector, yet he must avow the pious faith of his mother, or offend her and them. With the whole family now widely dispersed, he wrote to John in Rome, himself in London, and quoted their sister Jean's re­ port that their mother "told me the other day 'the first geat [way] she gaed every morning was to London, then to Italy, then to Craigenputtoch, and then into Mary's, and finally began to think them at Harne were maybe no safer than the rest' ••• Youare to pray for us all daily while separated from one another, 'that our ways be in God's keeping.'" (VI, 69) When sister Margaret died in 1830, and their father died in 1832, and Alick's little son died the next year, Carlyle's letters home were full of protective love and comfort. Though he had lost the faith of his parents ("If the mind is cultivated," he wrote John, "and cannot take in Religion by the old vehicle, a new one must be striven after.") (VI, 123) he could still express a piety to his mother which avoided, or concealed, their dif­ ferences. Only on the occasion of his father's death, in his letter of January 24, was he persuaded to assure her that "the Parted shall meet together again with God. Amen! So be it!" which, though he did not and could not believe it, does not mar the essential honesty of that eloquent noble letter. Nor was it only crises that called forth Carlyle's protectiveness. All his family letters are leavened with love, with cheerful humor and good practical advice--altogether free of impatience or anger. In a diverting letter to Alick, describing how their new-bought grey mare suddenly went berserk, Carlyle remarked with fine irony, "our gigging has reached an untimely end!" (VI, 224) The times were hard for farmers as well as for writers: when Alick found himself unable to farm Craigenput­ toch successfully, and tried first to obtain work operating a mill, then to rent another farm (this too would prove unsuc­ cessful and Alick would emigrate to Canada in 1843) Carlyle plied him with letters full of cheer and encouragement, though his own worries were equally distracting. John too needed support and constant encouragement. For John had obtained his medical degree at Edinburgh in 1826 but had never been able to find a practice or a medical position of any kind, and was living idle in London. It may be hard for us today to understand John's plight. The times were hard for young doctors as well as for farmers and writers. The profes­ sion of medicine had yet to come into its own. Even the best were not very effective with their nostrums and often gained prominence by their social rather than by their medical skills. They still practiced blood-letting, prescribed mercury for in­ digestion, henbane for headaches, laudanum for diverse pains, and castor oil, the "oil of sorrow," for everything. Dr. fladams, 268 BOOK REVIEWS with the best will in the world, had failed to cure Carlyle's "dyspepsia." Carlyle seems at least to have got no worse. It was often said that patients survived despite rather than be­ cause of the medical treatments of the day. Besides this, a young doctor had little chance of acquiring a practice unless he had independent means or influential connections, and John had neither. True, through Irving and Jeffrey Carlyle had made some connections, and openings now and then turned up, like the one in Warwick which Mrs. Anna Montagu wrote Carlyle about in October 1829, (V, 24) but these had come to nothing. John endeavored to redeem the time by writing articles for the periodicals, like his brother, on medical-related subjects like diet, alchemy, Animal magnetism, etc., and he would eventually, as we know, translate Dante, much to his credit. But these five years (1826-1831) were years of near-defeat and demorali­ zation by the threat of failure, and Carlyle took time from his own trials to send him a steady stream of advice and en­ couragement which, primarily an expression of brotherly devo­ tion, was also advice and encouragement that he needed himself and was, in a sense, girding himself with also. His single theme is: persevere adversity. Speaking from his own experience he warned John against abandoning medicine and try- ing for a career. "So convinced am I of the danger- ous, precarious and on the whole despicable and ungainly nature of a Life by Scribbling in any shape, that I am resolved to in­ vestigate again whether even I am forever doomed to it." (V, 255) Carlyle would not leave Literature, but then he had no other trade open to him, as John had. "I am clear for your straining every sinew simply to get Medical employment. wheth­ er as assistant Surgeon, or in any other honest capacity." (V, 254) When John mentions that he is in debt and that has offered to lend him money Carlyle warns him not to borrow if he can possibly help it, and tells how he himself has just declined Jeffrey's generous offer "to settle a hundred a year on unworthy me." (V, 80) There is no objection to accepting "honest" help; "Help towards work I would solicit from any reasonable man: mere pecuniary help (for its own sake) is a thing one should always be in the highest cautious of accepting. Few are worthy to give it; still fewer capable of worthily receiving it." (V, 296) Then, echoing his own suffering, and showing how he was trying to what he preached in Sartor Resartus, he added, "Oh I know the thrice­ cursed state you are in: hopeless, grim, death-defying thoughts; a world shut against you by inexpugnable walls. Rough it out, toil it out; other way of making a man have I never seen: one day, you will see it all to have been needed, and your highest, properly your only blessing." (V, 296-7) It was always best to Book Reviews 269

rely on one's own efforts first. He urged John, as he was continually urging himself, not to lose hope, yet to do more than hope--to persist energetically in his search for work. " ••• make up your mind to something (for you are quite miser­ able till then)." (V, 285) Only act resolutely, not doubt­ fully or hesitantly, and above all, act honestly: "Let quacks continue to quack; ••• and do you in preference take Honesty with bread and water, or even without it. God, as you say, will not leave those that have Faith in him; we may not have Pleasure, we do not need it, but Good we shall not fail to have." (V, 251) Carlyle's constant assurance to John that help lay near and would soon materialize was borne out sooner for John than for himself. In August 1831 Francis Jeffrey, besought by Carlyle, succeeded in finding a position for John as Travelling Physi­ cian for a wealthy lady, the Countess of Clare, at a salary of 300 guineas, and all expenses paid, while Carlyle would have to wait over two more years for even the serial pUblication of his Sartor. What is remarkable is that in all the letters Carlyle wrote John during those difficult years Carlyle's advice to him, in view of the outcome, was unfailingly sound, wise, and loving. Not only Jeffrey's but his own help also had saved his brother. (V, 271) When we turn to the letters Carlyle wrote to his editors we find the same honesty and sound judgment, but little love. Their purpose is practical and the style, usually courteous, can be disarmingly blunt. Even to McVey Napier, who succeeded Jeffrey as Editor of the Edinburgh Review and for whom Carlyle had considerable respect, his tone is businesslike and firm rather than friendly. But his respect was minimal for most of the editors with whom he dealt--Tait of Tait's Edinburgh Maga­ zine, Cochrane of the Foreign Quarterly Review, William Fraser of the Foreign Review, James Fraser of Fraser's Magazine, John Bowring of the Westminster Review. When John Murray baulked at printing Sartor, though only at "half-profits," and accused Carlyle of not giving him "the preference," Carlyle replied:

••• that your information, of my having submitted my Ms. to the greatest Publishers in London, if you mean thereby that after coming out of your hands it lay two days in those of Messrs. Longman & Rees, and was from them deliv­ ered over to the Lord Advocate,--is perfectly correct: if you mean anything else, incorrect • ••• that if you mean the Bargain, which I had understood myself to have made with you, unmade, you have only to cause your Printer who is now working on my Ms., to return the same without damage or delay, and consider the business as finished. (V, 442) 270 BOOK REVIEWS

Admittedly Sartor was a difficult work, but there were other reasons why Murray had changed his mind. Until the Reform Bill was passed, in June 1832, and even after that, the trade in literature was at a very low ebb. Napier told him that "there is no sale for books--nothing but periodicals & cheap publi­ cations being looked at--and, that they [the publishers] are resolved to save their capital till better times shall return to us." (V, 3l0n) This largely explains why Carlyle could not sell his History of German Literature or Sartor, and why hewas still, as he told Goethe, "but an Essayist;" (V, 29) and why he had to wait so often for so long for payment for his essays. No doubt it was desperate need (in February 1831 he wrote in his Notebooks, "I have some £5 to front the world with. If) which accounts for his impatience with offenders like Tait and Wil­ liam Fraser. It can be granted that he did manage to support himself by his writing, but at what cost, in terms of priva­ tion and effort, for Jane too, during their six years in the wilderness of Craigenputtoch, and at what cost to Carlyle's temper and patience. He was vehement in his condemnation of a trade which was worse than "honest Street Sweeping ••• I know not how a man without some degree of prostitution could live by it--unless indeed he were situated like me, and could live on potatoes-and-point. fI (V, 237) It was surely from a laudable pride that he refused to lower his literary standards just to sell his wares: flIt is not as a Critic of what others speak but as a Speaker for myself that I must appear. Something is gathering within me: I will set it forth when it is ready •.• Meanwhi Ie tho' several persons advise me to write Duds or Semi­ duds, I will not." (V, 440) Neither would he attempt worthier subjects offered him if such subjects either did not appeal to him or might tempt him to verbal intemperance. When Napier invited him to write on Byron for the Edinburgh Review Carlyle replied frankly that he was not "the right man for your object." (VI, 148) He had closed his Byron. And when he sent Napier his "Characteristics," written less guardedly than he had planned, he showed himself again willing, on grounds of liter­ ary conscience, to forfeit work and gain:

Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my own mind and the general condition of the world) unadviseable to print the Paper at all, then pray under­ stand, my dear Sir, now and always, that I am no unreason­ able man; but if dogmatic enough (as Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to be just to­ wards those of others. I shall, in all sincerity, beg of you to do, without fear of offence (for in no point indeed will there be any), what you yourself see good. (VI, 66) Book Reviews 271

Conversely, on the same principle, remembering how Jeffrey had altered his essay on Burns, he warned Napier against any "light Editorial hacking and hewing" of his work. (VI, 196) For such honesty Napier in his turn respected Carlyle but Napier was an exception to the general run of editors, who were mere merchants: one "must throw your ware into one of those dog's meat carts, such as travel the public streets, and get it sold there, be it carrion or not." (VI, 85) Considering his opinion of them, Carlyle's letters to such editors as John Bowring, the two Frasers, and William Tait are the more inter­ esting for their polite manner and felicity of expression. If this is self-serving, it was absolutely necessary to survival. Knowing that they too had their problems in a troubled mercan­ tile world he could honestly address them with some courtesy and consideration, but they were all, after all, an irritating part of what became more and more an alien hostile world against which and in which he had to struggle--different altogether from the secure inner world of his family to whom he could ex­ press himself, if not entirely without restraint, then with full confidence of their love and loyalty. To his personal friends Carlyle wrote with genuine affec­ tion, as one would expect, but also with clear practical pur­ pose. Needing books and periodicals he often gave specific directions how certain volumes should be sent him, by the elab­ orate and clumsy (but evidently pretty reliable) mail services then prevailing between London or Edinburgh and Craigenputtoch. It is a rare letter indeed that does not make inquiries, even demands, for current literary and political news; from Mill he can learn more about the Utilitarians, the Saint Simonians, and can obtain books about the ; throughEmer­ son he hears about the influence of and, even­ tually, of his own works too, in America; and Jeffrey (though we do not have their correspondence) no doubt gave Carlyle news of political and social developments, regularly gave him franks to save the Carlyles cost of postage, and, as we know, helped Carlyle by helping John. Nore importantly, however, the letters to and from his friends were a communion of souls, a precious source of human contact, of personal support and com­ fort, both received and given. Hence the warm generosity of his letters to Dr. Badams, \nlliam Graham, Leigh Hunt, Henry Inglis, Edward Irving, and many others. }"or anyone of Scottish birth he showed a loyal sympathy. To anyone in trouble he of­ fered help, love, often money. His correspondence with Goethe kept him in contact with greatness and nourished his faith in heroes. The Saint Simonians at first seemed to offer actual proof of his own belief that moral and spiritual values could be made to work in political affairs, but his several letters 272 BOOK REVIEWS

to Gustave d'Eichthal who had sent him in July 1830 the "packet of books" about their were polite and kindly but firm in stating his serious reservations about their claim to be a Religion. And to Mill, who at first he had hoped would become a disciple, he clearly his opposition to Utilitarian­ ism, although he continued, as we know, to receive material and personal benefits through their friendship; with all the warm admiration each had for the other their attraction was essen- one of opposites, but during these Craigenputtoch years Mill provided a number of valuable assists to Carlyle's career, especially in the way of introducing him to important people. In view, then, of the strongly practical nature of the let­ ters to family, editors, and friends, we may perhaps call Car­ lyle something of an enlightened opportunist. He had to be. In the first place, one cannot read many of them without being struck by his sense of aloneness. No one could win success for him. As oldest son, educated by his parents for the minis­ try--which he had abandoned--he felt keenly the obligation to succeed in his adopted , to support and protect the whole family and to make them proud of him as a writer who was, after all, a preacher. The same obligation increased his worldly ambition. But as a Scotsman, seeking entrance into the intel­ lectual and social world of London, he was destined always to be a sort of foreigner, or outsider. Not but that this condi­ tion lent him the charm of strangeness to Londoners; he re­ mained obviously a Scot all his life and was always, in a sense, a Solitary aware of his solitude. Born and bred in the Low­ lands, without initial connections, he must hope by his letters to increase the number of his friends and of the kinds of op­ portunity that gave him the chance to help himself. He had to be and chose to be always on his own. Add to this, as a cause of his sense of isolation, that no one with his , II or would agree even after Sal'tol' Resa1'tus appeared in Prasel"s. Mill was not a ; his countryman Jeffrey was more and more entangled in politics; Goethe's tangible support ended in 1832, and even Emerson, whom he loved, was not, with his Socinian optimism, a kindred spirit. Admirers he had, as well as a rapidly growing reputa­ tion based on his periodical essays, but these essays contained only a fraction of his message, and that fraction, so far, was hardly heard or heeded. Alone with his ideas, he was alone too as he beheld the decline or misfortune of others, while he was resolved stubbornly to follow his own course without weakening. He had to watch his oldest best friend, Irving, fall from strong faith into lose his church, then his health and, finally, in 1834, his life. Both Coleridge and De Quincey whom he knew had suffered from addiction to opium. Book Reviews 273

William Glen, Scottish friend of all the Carlyle family, with a "very considerable though utterly confused talent," (V, 364) went mad, and died. Another friend, Frank Dixon, died of ill health in 1832. Charles Buller and John Sterling were both ailing and would die prematurely. Dr. Badams, who could not help Carlyle, could not help himself, and died of drink in 1834. Truly, life seemed so fraught with death that the pan­ ics caused hy the frequent epidemics of cholera and typhus in scarcely touched him. "Man walks on the very brink of unfathomable abysses," he wrote John, "if he swerves but a little to the right hand or left, he sinks and is swallowed forever!" (VI, 18) He was fond of quoting Schiller's "Ernst ist das Leben," from the Prologue to Wallenstein, and usually omitted the second half of the line, "heiter ist die Kunst;" (VI, 258, 271) if life is perilous, and serious, then it fol­ lows "that he who will not struggle cannot conquer." (VI, 258) But it is abundantly clear in these letters that he is equal to the struggle. His enlightened opportunism was a function also of his energy. Genius, as Matthew Arnold said, is mainly an affair of energy. Carlyle seems to have had inexhaustible amcunts of it. He was determined not to fall as some of his friends were falling but rather to follow the advice he gave his brothers, and prove the lessons he had propounded in Sar­ tor, i.e., to cure discouragement with action, to deny plea­ sure and gain strength through sorrow. Yet, though almost no one can be more eloquent than Carlyle on the subject of sorrow and death, the overall emphasis is not on sorrow but on deter­ mination and hope. If hope does not spring eternal it must be summoned. The quietude of Craigenputtoch lent itself to calm thought and hard work. Carlyle made plans, and carried them out; he read steadily and waited for the kind of illumination that brought conviction. Writing to Mrs. Montagu in June 1830, he called Craigenputtoch his "Patmos," adding "only that no Revelation is yet forthcoming." (V, 109) But by September he would be ready to start writing the first draft of Sartor, and the process of Revelation continued strong so that when the first draft did not sell he could expand and complete the whole work during March through August of 1831. It would not be pub­ lished for two more years--though Carlyle cannily inserted long passages from it into his essay, "Goethe's Works." The long wait for publication produced hardship, certainly, but also a stoical kind of humor: thus to John

As to Teufelsdreck I may conclude this first section of his history in few words. Murray, on my renewed demand some days after your departure, forwarded me the Ms with a polite enough note, and a "Criticism" from some alto- 274 BOOK REVIEWS

gether immortal "Master of German Literature," to me quite unknown; which Criticism (a miserable, Dandiacal, quodlibet, in the usual vein) did not authorize the Publication in these times. Whereupon, inspecting the Paper to ascer­ tain that it was all there, we (my good Lady and I) wrapped all up, and laid it by under lock and key, to wait pa­ tiently for better times, or if so were ordered, to the end of times: and then despatching a very cordial-looking note to Murray, wound up the whole matter, not without composure of soul ••• thus ~eck may perhaps be considered as postponed sine die. (VI, 28-29)

The buoyancy and wit that run through these letters indi­ cate, as we suggested earlier, that there was a robust and sanguine side of that is sometimes forgotten. John once told him that he was by nature "light and frolicsome" but that "fierce and disease has made you otherwise." (VI, 27n) Not "otherwise," Carlyle "frolicked" in words, wrote cheerfully others, and often rallied his bro- ther thus:

Hourly you come into my head sitting in your lone cabin in that human chaos [London], with mehr als ein schilling, [sic] and bread and water for your dinner; and I cannot say but I respect you more and love you more than ever I did. Courage! Courage! , "deliberate valour" is God's highest , and comes not without trial to any. Times will mend: or if Times never mend, then in the Devil's name, let them stay as they are, or grow worse, and we will mend. (V, 305)

Not among Satan's fallen angels, yet they felt themselves ex­ cluded from society, and Carlyle rallies both John and himself to the satanic-heroic mood, as if they were indeed:

Arming to Battel, and in stead of rage Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd With dread of death to flight or foul retreat ••• (Par. Lost, I, 553-5)

The phrase fits him well in these letters, but unsatanically. Deliberate he was, striving to think aright while always re- maining open to the views of others, and planning to do aright by considerateness of others with different objec­ tives from his own. At this stage of his thinking tolerance presents no problems, at least ideally. " ••• real Belief," he wrote Napier (V, 196), is not inconsistent with Tolerance of Book Reviews 275 its opposite; nay is the only thing consistent there with, for your Elegant Indifference is at heart only idle~ selfish, and quite intolerant ••• one can and should ever speak quietZ,y ••• " Valourous he was too, as we have seen, in both the private and public conduct of his life. With these various differences among Carlyle's letters to his family, his editors. his friends and acquaintances, they all nevertheless have a distinct unity which his own person­ ality and intellect impose on them. The tenor of love and honesty, his energy and drive directed towards high achieve­ ment, his strong sense of duty and practicality, with wit and good humor playing over all, make them peculiarly his own. Jane's letters do not break the unity but are part of it, for her wit and ultimate concern for their welfare match his own. Indeed, Volumes V, VI, and VII, taken together, may be said to exhibit the dramatic unities of time, place, and action. Dur­ ing these six years the stage is Craigenputtoch. The action is essentially a retreat to mobilize forces; some six hundred letters and numerous periodical essays are written, and two books are completed but not published. There are changes of scene when Carlyle and Jane visit London and Edinburgh, and new characters come onstage with visits from Jeffrey, Emerson, George Moir, and others; messages are brought from Goethe, and from the Saint Simonians, sad messages from Scotsbrig, good ones from London; and the common themes are Carlyle's writing and the daily problems of house-keeping and farm-keeping. Small triumphs like John's obtaining a position are set off against deaths, manuscript rejections, and a leak in the old black tea­ pot. (VI, 253-5) The crisis and climax come when they final­ ly decide in February 1834 to leave Scotland and move perma­ nently to London, and when in June he and Jane settle at 5 Cheyne Row which will be their home for the rest of their lives. That winter saw the death of Edward Irving, which ended a stage of their lives, while they were beginning their life on another stage. SaY'toY', serialized in FY'aser>' s, had finished in Augus t, with a poor reception, but Carlyle was about to begin work on his history of the French Revolution. The last letter, written to his mother on 24 December 1834, reaffirms the family unity and love, and sets the stage for the continuation of life's tasks:

My Dear Mother, I did intend writing to you one of these days; and here is Jack's Letter, which says plainly, Let it be tonight! My day's work is done, better or worse, and also my day's walking: we have a clear cinder-and-coal fire here, a room almost as quiet as the Scotsbrig one; 276 BOOK REVIEWS

Jane sits "writing to her Nother" on the one side of the table; I, on the other, sit writing to mine. (VII, 353)

We have seen Carlyle, in these letters, at his most crea­ tive, most cheerful, and most tolerant. He still has a degree of negative capability, the calm endurance of uncertainties and willingness to respect persons whose ideas his own ideas contradicted. Some of his politeness to such persons, we know, arose from an awareness that he could not afford to make ene­ mies of those who might help him. The world was all before him, yet the world was in many ways hostile and strange. With all his correspondents, even intimate ones, certain practical considerations required adaptation of manner. Letters reveal the man but not the whole man, not the inner private self but the sociable, appareled self (or persona) which the writer consciously or unconsciously prepares for others. Anyone's behavior, in word or act, operates on several levels, or in several dimensions. For Carlyle there are at least three dimensions. There are, first, the published works, i.e., his books and essays--his poems too--which are creative, didactic, and autonomous. They carry his most carefully con- sidered ideas and thoughts to the , and once written they must stand on their own feet. (VI, 29) Second, the Journals and Reminiscences are, on the other hand, confessive and nos­ talgic. Although the Reminiscences are written with a view to their eventually being published in some form, the Journals were probably never intended to be published. Carlyle wrote them for his own sake, from his self, and without in­ tended disguise. Notes and jottings for his current work in­ termingle with gloomy reflections and bitter self-complaints. It is probably a mistake to try to find the whole or the "real" Carlyle in anyone of these three kinds of writing. The Let­ ters stand between the other two, and throw invaluable light upon both his inner life and the published works. Yet it may be granted with Edwin W. Marrs! that they probably "reflect his prevailing state of mind" better than "his gloomy Journal entries." No longer does he need to assume roles as he had done in the earlier letters, but he still perforce adapts his manner to the immediate purpose or to the particular person he is addressing. If the letters do not show the whole Carlyle, they richly demonstrate his maturity at this time in his life, his genius, and his robust health. There is little or nothing about the old dyspepsia, less too about trivial or local matters, but a deepening profundity of thought as he his transcen- dental philosophy. His amazing intellectual force is evident Book Reviews 277

everywhere. He forgets nothing, he misses nothing, he does not make mistakes. He completes what he begins and if what he has completed cannot be sold he begins again. By 1834 Carlyle has lived almost half of his life. More struggles and disappointments lie ahead, and his stubborn re­ solve will now and again dissolve into "desperate hope." (V, 217, 221, 249) His tolerance will at length grow thinner. But these letters are imbued with "deliberate valour. II Perhaps we can be forgiven if we see a proleptic irony in Carlyle's use of the phrase. Later he will become more satanic in tem­ per; his deliberateness will lose patience, his valour become bitter. But not yet. Now, he faces with true courage a re­ markable career in London's world of letters and will write there most of his published work. There are good years ahead for them both, but these were the best years.

NOTE

1 E. W. Marrs, Jr., Ed., The Letters of to his Brother Alexander (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) p. viii.

CARLISLE MOORE University of Oregon

Jerome Mitchell. The Operas: An Analysis of Operas Based on the Works of Sir Walter Scott. University of Alabama Press. 1977. 402 pp. $17.50

Jerome Mitchell has made a valuable contribution to the history of 19th-century culture, for opera was in a way the cinema of the , and operas disseminated Romantic attitudes to a wider public than did any other artistic mode. , of course, was popular, and the novel more so, but opera reached a non-reading public and an illiterate public. In Italy, for example, dozens of operas on Italian historical themes prepared public opinion for the struggle for the liber­ ation and unification of Italy. The immense popularity of Scott's novels and poems throughout Europe demanded operatic treatment. Mitchell has been able to determine the existence of about fifty operas based directly or indirectly on Scott, all, except for The Lady of the Lake, on the novels. All but a few of these are discussed in his book, including several musical dramas and two pastiches, the music taken from various Rossini operas. 278 BOOK REVIEWS

Mitchell does not pretend to have discovered all the Scott operas. He is sure there must be more. And so am I. What surprises me is that there were so few. One reason is that as the century grew older, librettists tended to use historical materials taken from the history of their own countries. Mit­ chell does not, regrettably, include a chronological list, but the majority of his works come from the first half of the cen­ tury; for nationalistic reasons that circumstance is to be ex­ pected. Still, nationalism is by no means an adequate expla­ nation for such a small number of Scott operas in a century in which thousands of operas were written and produced. A better explanation for the fact that Mitchell has dis­ covered only about fifty operas is to be found in the extent of his researches. His work is based upon research in the , the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Newberry Library. Further research was done in Copenhagen and Amster­ dam, the Bibliotheque de l'Opera, and several U. S. libraries. But if one is in Paris, why go to Copenhagen when Milan is nearer? His explanation is that Italy has no central deposi­ tory of musical material such as those found in other countries. That is true, but there are accessible and usable conserva­ tories and opera house archives and publishing house records in Milan, Venice, Florence. Available dictionaries and annals of operas must always be presumed to be incomplete, but if Mitchell consulted available Italian works of this sort, there is little indication that he has done so, except for an account of an unsuccessful effort to locate the score of an opera per­ formed only in Ajaccio. Nor in fact is research in Italy really all that difficult, even granting that one may not know Italian and must set to and learn it. I have before me a catalogue of an exhibition of Romanticismo Stopico, held in Florence at the PalazzoPitti, Dec. 1973 to Feb. 1974. This enormously valuable catalogue contains, along with masses of useful and freshly researched information about pictures and the sources of those pictures in the of the time (c. 1810-1870), a section on the operas written on the same themes as the pictures. Scott, unfortunately, is not included, but there are four operas on Mary Stuart, taken from Schiller, primarily, and two on David Riccio. A group of scholars carried out the research for this section, which lists 130 operas. The research was carried out exclusively at the Marucelliana of Florence, the Fondazione Cini in Venice, and the Conservatorio de S. Cecilia in Rome. The catalogue further mentions places in which further research needs to be done: the archives of Ricordi, of the Fenice at Venice, and the music library S. Pietro a Maiella, which con­ tains all the archives of S. Carlo at Naples. Others admitted­ ly, the catalogue states, are difficult of access and not Book Reviews organized. Still, considering the great popularity of Scott in Italy (a subject on which the New CBEL, like the old one, is hopelessly inadequate and incorrect), it is hard to under­ stand why Mitchell made no effort even to investigate the three highly accessible sources used for the catalogue, and the quite accessible other sources mentioned above. This omission of research in Italy makes Mitchell's book far less valuable than it should have been. In other ways, as well, I am less happy about Mitchell's work than I had hoped to be. "I approach the Scott operas as a literary historian rather than as a musicologist or music critic. I am less interested in passing judgment on an opera as music and drama than in seeing what the composer and the librettist do to a given novel, story, or poem when they re­ shape it into an opera." That is what Mitchell set out to do, and it would be foolish to complain that he did not set out to do something else. Yet in carrying out his intention, he has encountered a problem which he did not successfully meet. Nothing is so dreary to read as detailed accounts of plots; yet that is what the bulk of the book consists of. There is, in fact, very little discussion of what the librettist has done to his source, and even less of why he might have done so. Nor is there much literary analysis of the libretti. There is some indication that the modifications were controlled by the stereotypes and platitudes of opera, which in fact are not as well-known as they are thought to be and not nearly so silly as is often asserted. At his recommendation I renewed my know­ ledge of the Scott plots from Oxford Companion to EngZish Lit­ erature, but tha t was not of much help, for the summaries there are brief, while Mitchell's are very lengthy and detailed. The result is that I have no general ideas of any sharpness as to what happened to Scott's works when they were transformed into operas. Only one notion stands out, one that I expected but was glad to see confirmed; the later the opera the more likely it kept the story line close to the original. That is, the earlier in the century the more likely the librettist was to use the work for hardly more than a general idea, at least in a good many instances. Evidently, composer and librettist were trading on the popularity of Scott without worrying too seriously about what made Scott popular. The greater care of the later century is consonant with the increasing intellec­ tual and dramatic responsibility of librettists and composers in the post-Hagnerian period, though Hagner was as much symp­ ~om as cause. I offer this merely as the kind of generaliza­ :ion it would have been possible to develop from the material itchell had assembled. He has, I am sorry to say, only pro­ lded some useful materials for cultural history without making BOOK REVIEI much of a contribution to that history itself. Still, we should be grateful for any genuinely useful contribution to our understanding of the enormous cultural importance of opera in the 19th century.

MORSE PECKHAM University of South Carolina

Maurice Lindsay. History of scottish Literature. London. Hale. 1977. 496 pp. £8.95.

It is heartening that broad surveys of this scope and general type should continue to be compiled, as so often in the past, by those who are not academics, and it is arguable, indeed, that breadth of perspective and catholicity of taste arequa1i­ ties more characteristic of the amateur than the professional. Bias of one kind or another can scarcely be avoided, but many otherwise admirable literary histories have been marred by an undue authorial preference for such-and-such an author or par­ ticular period; Mr. Lindsay, if he has felt any such tempta­ tion, has not noticeably succumbed to it. Some may feel that he has devoted over-much space to second-rate and even to third-rate figures, and this at the expense of major writers, but Mr. Lindsay might well defend his approach on the reason­ able grounds that the works of such major figures have been granted critical attention elsewhere. The qualities of the author of general historical surveys have always seemed to me similar to those required of the an­ thologist, rather than those of the literary critic. Since Mr. Lindsay's lengthy study abounds in quotation and illustra­ tion, it has indeed something of the flavour of an anthology; and here the only quality lacking is that of inspiration. It is of course an immensely difficult task to convey the essence of an authorial personality or of a literary eidos through brie citations, but it is not, I hope, mere carping to say that Mr Lindsay frequently fails in this respect; one hardly needs, for example, a three-page exemplwn to convince the reader c I the inner vacuity of Barrie's prose, and Scott, on the oth I hand, is no less characteristically Scott when writing at )1 worst than when at his best--a fact that Mr. Lindsay omit demonstrate. Nor, to compensate for this weakness, doef produce for us very many undiscovered or little-known f ties; I can think of only one instance1--for the whicp duly grateful--where he has persuaded me to turn the ' 1 / Book Reviews 281 a forgotten or disregarded text in search of further pleasures, and--although radical revaluations are no part of his business here--I can't help but account this, over 430-odd pages, rather more than a minor defect. For this and for another excellent reason, I find this H1:sl;ory of Scottish Literature instructive and yet not greatly enlightening--and I write as one who, being a Lecturer in Eng­ lish Literature at the University of Wales, may well stand more in need of enlightenment than most. The trouble is that facts, unrelated to theory or conjecture, are not in them­ selves very enlightening things; hence the very ample material and the concise judgments that are here provided do not enable me to postulate answers to the very questions that they so of­ ten raise. They are even, in many instances, to be accounted misleading. Thus of a poem the "Scottishness" of which few will choose to deny, Dunbar's TWa Maryit Wemen QP~ the Wedo, Mr. Lindsay remarks:

It simply shows three women in a pleasant twilit garden, having drunk their rich wines together, as later ladies might have drunk tea, talking frankly about what interests them most: their sex lives •.•

This is at once true, and hardly true at all. It ignores completely Malory's dictum that "love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadayes"--indeed, the direct comparison to "later ladies" seems expressly to deny it. Yet one has but to turn virtually at random to the text--

Thar is no liffand leid so law of degre That saIl me luf unluffit, I am so loik hertit; And gif his lust so be lent into my lyre quhit, That he be lost or with me lig, his lif saIl nocht danger. I am so mercifull in mynd, and menys all wichtis, My sely saull salbe saif, quhen sa bot all jugis •••

--to see how skilfully Dunbar navigates those freely-flowing intra-lingual and inter-cultural tides of which the "factual" approach takes bare cognizance. (Consider the role of the words danger and mercifull amidst the Scotticisms.) The all­ prevalent irony is Chaucerian; I find nothing "simple" about the poem at all, and would even hesitate to deduce from it an anti-feminist bias, since it is a highly artificial, not a natural code of female behaviour that Dunbar is satirising. By the same token, I cannot agree with Mr. Lindsay that-- 282 BOOK REVIHJS

Dunbar's personal poems tell us quite a lot about his character, his moodiness and deep depressions contrasting with bouts of exuberant exultation. Today, he would prob­ ably be described as having a manic-depressive tempera­ ment ••.

--since the extent to which they are, in a modern sense, "per­ sonal" seems to me dubious. Again, the comparison to a con­ temporary context--in this last case, to a contemporary jar­ gon--involves a certain falsification, of a kind quite separ­ ate from that which may be inherent in all historical ascesis. Mr. Lindsay certainly does not show the condescension of the Victorian critic towards "the simpler-minded artists of an earlier age," but his conclusion that Dunbar's stature (may) seem less than that of either Burns or MacDiarmid" may ultimately rest on equally untenable grounds. "It is difficult to talk about ," a much more recent critic has said, "because it is difficult to talk about Ireland. When a conquered country hangs on to its un­ conquered identity, instead of absorbing the invaders and dis­ covering a new identity, the result is tragic confusion." I am not sure if this comment has the force of a general propo­ sition--I do not even know quite what Mr. James Simmons means by the term "conquered"--but I find a comparable confusion at the heart of Mr. Lindsay's survey; and it is a secondary weak­ ness of his method that--though constantly treated of by im­ plication--the question of what constitutes Scottish literature never clearly emerges. Apparently he takes the expression to mean, broadly, literature relating to the "matter" of Scotland, and this no doubt is a legitimate usage; but the fact remains that the historians of other national literatures do not in­ terpret the term in this way. is generally taken to mean literature written in the English language (as is French literature, German, Russian, etc.); it follows that no one form of English can properly be called the English lan­ guage, and HacDiarmid's poems are written in an English as cor­ rect, in this sense, as that of Betjeman. The inseparability of the Scottish and English "variants" is apparent. Even if one considers so pre-eminently local and dialectal a medium as the popular proverb, one finds an early anthologist (James drawn irresistibly to this conclusion:

I proposed •••• to write down none but those which I knew to be Native, Genuine, Scotish Proverbs; but as I proceeded, I found it impossible strictly to distinguish Book Reviews 283

the Scot ish from the English. For both Nations speak the same Language, have constant Intercourse the one with the other, and no doubt borrow their Proverbs the one from the other •••

Here, certainly, is a source of confusion, since this judg­ ment must seem contestable only on nationalistic grounds. Yet on such grounds 's later strictures (on Kelly) are obviously based; it may seem an instance of comic, rather than of tragic, irony that Ramsay's nationalistic fervour should find its principal outlet through an Edinburgh club following a London model at which the Spectator was assid'uously read at every meeting, yet such ironies beset the whole course of Scottish literary history--as Mr. Lindsay incidentally shows. Patriotic enthusiasm is certainly as praiseworthy a quality as is critical acumen--I do not mean to imply otherwise, but simply to suggest that their marriage is of difficult and rare achievement. Mr. Lindsay does not fall into the elementary trap of allowing the former quality to guide the judgments in­ spired by the latter; he is, compared to some others, an ad­ mirably balanced cicerone. Yet national allegiances can af­ fect us in more subtle ways, and from such influences he is not altogether free. It should be noticed that, beside its political interests, Ramsay's Easy Club had as a staple topic of discussion, "the Requisites necessary to Constitute a Gentle­ man"--

... It was found and Concluded that Continuing Three years a good Easy Fellow of this Society Constitutes a Gentleman without any other pretensions •••

and it may be felt that the democratic flavour of this conclu­ sion is distinctively un-English; it seems to me further argu­ able that even from a moderate nationalist viewpoint--such as Mr. Lindsay's--a proposition remaining unspoken and implicit in literary debate is that works written by good Easy Fellows of their Society constitute Scottish Literature without any other pretensions, the only question remaining to be decided being what constitutes "a good Easy Fellow." Here, the flavour of the proposition itself is in a way definitive. One of the best-known and best-loved of Scottish poems celebrates "the man 0' independent mind;" the good Fel­ low is democratic, indeed radical, in his views, and on certain topics thoroughly bloody-minded. But his may well be linked to an extreme traditionalism; in Henryson' s prophetic fable, it is beyond all question the "Uponlandis Mous" who ex­ cites a Scottish reader's sympathies. Upon this antisyzygy 284 BOOK REVIEWS

(the borrowing is Mr. s) a balance has uneasily to be maintained; in Dunbar's case, as we have seen, an "obsession with his own problems" (reflecting, no doubt, his "manic-de­ pressive temperament") imperils this balance, hence the caution of Hr. Lindsay's assessment. By rather the same token, many modern Russian critics minimise the achievement of Dostoiev­ sky. It is also very noticeable that the most remarkable liter­ ary works written by Scotsmen in the eighteenth century were produced by two start different individuals, of which one is a national hero, the other commonly denigrated. Hr. Lindsay, true to this tradition and to his fellow-Scot Hacau- lay's view, gives 28 pages to (and wishes he could give more); to Boswell he gives 4. And one senses that this bias reflects an inner conviction of Boswell's es­ sential un-Scottishness; he is too sycophantic, too Tory, too hypocritical, too voyeuristic. Yet precisely these character­ istics in a modern context--allied to that business acumen which few Scots wish to deny themselves--are those of the ideal newspaper editor!proprietor;2 and nobody will deny, either, the extraordinary success that the Scots have attained in this particular field. (Mr. Lindsay is indeed himself a journalist of distinction.) Arguably Boswell was far more typical a Scot than was ever Robert Burns; that, the cynic may say, is exact­ ly the trouble. Yet here I don't intend a mere jibe; the idea that literature a national identity or even a char- acteristic national "personality'! is perfectly tenable, but the idea that it should to any such concept is a source of truly heinous error, One of the few points, nevertheless, wherein Mr. Lindsay attains a genuine acerbity is in a passing conunent on the editing of the Penguin Book of Scottish Ver'se, in which volume he feels a "false picture" of the na­ tional poetic genius is conveyed. (The same accusation, on self-same grounds, was made of Edwards' Modern Scottish eighty years ago or so; a fact that seems to me significant.) Hr. Lindsay's book is not designed to appeal to a specifi­ cally academic audience; I have been unable to resist voicing an initial academic complaint, but have tried in general to discuss it, and the issues it raises, in broad 's--and obviously a non-Scottish layman's--terms. Like Hr. Lindsay, however, I have certain unexpressed inner convictions which in all honesty I should declare: among them is the belief that the day of the full-length "literary history" is now over, be­ cause the degree of falsification inherent in the form of order therein imposed is of a kind no longer to be "It is more than seventy years," Mr. Lindsay tells us, "since a sur­ vey of this kind has been undertaken"; he suggests that the Book Reviews 285 time is ripe for another, while I draw an opposite conclusion. Well, this is a matter of opinion. I of course agree that, where simplification is necessary, the short chronological sur­ vey will always retain an instrumental value and may be of great use to foreign students, in native schools, and even on an undergraduate level; but Mr. Lindsay's book is not apparent­ ly addressed to any of these audiences, either. It has many of the characteristics of a labour of love, and it must be harsh to regard it as labour in large part wasted; yet to use a literary history as a work of occasional reference is to de­ prive it of its overall raison d';tre. This will be the fate of Mr. Lindsay's study, if the conclusion above outlined is in fact correct. But no doubt the next seventy years will show.

NOTES

1 That of Drummond of Hawthornden, an elegant and unfairly neglected versifier and a grant translatour of Continental cul­ tures.

2 Curiously and significantly, Mr. Lindsay says of Boswell's interview with (which he cites in full): "Hume sur- vived the encounter with good-humoured , Boswell with the puzzlement of a yellow-press journalist whose scoop story has gone unexpectedly sour on him." He speaks elsewhere of Boswell as an "inspired gossip" whose "instincts as a reporter were constantly at work." On this point, then, we would seem to be in substantial agreement. But why the unmistakably de­ rogatory tone?

SHAUN McCARTHY University of Qatar

Donald A. Low~ ed. Robert Burns: The Critiaal Heritage. Lon­ don and . Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1974. 447 pp. £8.25.

The opinions about Burns during the period covered by this book (1786-1837) are dominated by a concern about social class--how could (for some, how dare) the plowman write poetry so clearly of a higher order than that of the threasher Stephen Duck? Allan Cunningham testifies (1834, p. 411) that many at first thought his poems "the labours of some gentleman," because they were beyond the reach and power "of a simple ploughman." It was 286 B / difficult to deal with, as Cowper said (1787, p. 91), these kingdoms have produced in the lower rank of since Shakespeare," But the first review explained the nomenon to almost everybody's complete satisfaction by th~ sen­! timental "Heaven-taught ploughman" error (, 1786, p. 70). Burns helped to foster the error by his social-climb­ ing, showpiece poem for the first edition, The Cotter's Satur­ day Night, which for the whole period was the universal favor­ ite because it served ruling-class interests by presenting the suffering cotters as happy, patriotic, healthy, and religious-­ very comforting to the ear of oppressors. Burns' first editor is typical in proving the realism of the poem by claiming it as autobiography: "the Cotter was Burns's father," (Currie, 1800 , p. l44n). But Burns's father was a farmer, one big social and economic step up, and Burns was currying favor with the rich and powerful by choosing a dying class just below his own to sit for his idealized portrait. It took 100 years before a critic recognized the fraud: "I. •• would not give my Holy Fair. still less ••• my Jolly Beggars .. • for a wilderness of Saturday Nights" (William Henley in the Centenary Edition, 1901, IV, 276). Class consciousness explains why almost everybody was disturbed with what was considered Burns's immorality--his baw­ dry, impiety, irregularity, drinking; as a Scottish clergyman said in denying Burns because of his poverty the right to be a "Country Libertine": "no man should avow rakery who does not possess an estate of 500£ a year" (1787, p. 79). Some thought his class impaired his poems; and the formidable Francis Jeff­ rey forthrightly listed five reminders of "lowness of origin" or "symptoms of rusticity," one of which, caused by his assum­ ing an equality with women, was his "want of polish, or at least of respectfulness, in the general tone of his gallantry," (1809, pp. 181-184). On the other hand, another thought his poetry was improved by his class, which encouraged energy and enthusi­ asm," in contrast with the "more polished and insipid ranks" of Cowper (1805, p. 171). And most of those in the collection~­ that is, those who wrote about Burns, as distinct from the poor, who just sang and recited him--were critical of his political radicalism: DeQuincey recalls the opinions of the older ac­ quaintances of his youth in Liverpool who looked down on Burns "as upon one whose spirit was rebellious overmuch against the institutions of man, and jacobinical in a sense which 'men of property' and master manufacturers will never brook" (1837, p. 431). I suspect that Burns's class still gets in the way of aca­ demic interest in him: his poetry is too robust and downright and concerned with the daily, dirty world to be very poetic, as most of us have been trained to think. Indeed, this collection Book RevielJs 287 encourages speculation about current opinions. I'm tempted to apply to the reception of my series of critical articles on Burns's comic , epistles, satires, Tam o'Shanter (SP, 1960, 634-47; PQ, 1970, 188-210; Scottish Lit. J., 1974, l5~28; SEL, 1968, 537-50) DeLancey Ferguson's petulant complaint about the reception of his more impressive scholarly series in vari­ ous journals in the 'thirties: "The articles evoked an almost passionate apathy" (Pride and Passion, 1939, p. ix). In spite of Crawford's insightful critical study (1960), Egerer's useful primary bibliography (1964), Kinsley's monumental Oxford edi­ tion (1968), and Fitzhugh's scholarly biography (1970), there is apparently little critical interest in Burns nowadays, let alone many new ideas about or approaches to him (always except­ ing Scotland and Scottish overseas communities where interest in Burns remains strong and classless--see Scottish popular periodicals like Scottish Field and the still flourishing Bur·ns Chronicle). Criticism of all older British authors is increas­ ingly confined to the academy in the U.S., and there just isn't much there of Burns. He's certainly not being read in classrooms: my selection (Bobbs-Merrill) sold a few dozen copies a year until it went out of print in 1977, and the only other good soft-cover Burns text, Robert Thornton's (Houghton Mifflin), I don't imagine does much better. Aside from the general decline of interest here in British authors, the parti­ cular reasons for the decline of academic interest in Burns are (1) that he writes in a Scottish tradition, which few seem to want to take the effort to know and (2) since he falls outside of and chronologically between the traditional but factitious English periods, Augustan and Romantic, he does not receive attention by students of either (I disagree with Bentman'sview that Burns is best understood as a British Romantic--SIR, 1972, 207-24). But a poet who was not unusually during the first third of the last century thought to rank above all of what we now call the six British Romantic poets cannot long remain unread or un­ sung, even in U. S. classrooms. Burns has several things going for him right now. There is a new interest in poor (the Ii terature of the so-called inarticulate) in all times and places, and he and Blake are the only established British poets of their century who express a politically radical, working-class point of view. There is a strong current interest in folk song and Burns wrote more good folk songs than any other poet and knew more about Scottish song than any other collector. Also some of the growing number of Marxist critics may reinterpret and reassess Burns by relating him and his work to the class and economic structure of society when an old world was coming to an end during the industrial and agricultural revolutions (only 288 BOOK REVIEWS

David Craigts few pages i.n Seottish Lit. and, the Scot. People, 1961, has made a beginning on this subject). Low is successful in eollecting i-n chronologieal order the early opinions about Burnsrs poems and songs, although he has had to be selective by extraeting from some voluminous but i.n- f erior critieism (e.g., ll47 Gleig and lf 5L Peterkin) and by ex- cludi.ng eyewitness accounts of the man, except for the two most important memoirs by Maria Riddell and Walter Scott. Some few of the items are from manuscript (the only clearly important one, by Thomas Dunean 1125, is unaccountably severely abridgqd) , most are reprinted for the first time and almost all of them (except for those by the big Romantics, which are very car€- fu11y and ful1y culled) are hard to get hold of. This is a very useful book for the student of Burnsts reputation, but for the sake of completenessr and commodiousness some terrible trivia (e. g. , the si11y Noctes Ambrosianae dialogues from Blacl

JOHN C. I^IESTON uniu er sity of lrlas sacVrusett s .

Donald A. Low, ed . fuitical Essays on Robert Burns. London and Boston. Routledge & Kegan paul. 1975. 191 pp. g4.25.

CYiti,cal Essays on Robert Buwts is a sequel to Robert Buyns the CVitical Heritag.e, a collection of oplni.on from the fifty years beginning with L786. These favorable and unfavorable pronounce- ments were hampered by limited biographical knowledge, inade- quate inf ormation about Burns t background and purpose, reti-- cence before his full-blooded vitallty, and provincialism. But there was widespread recognition of his t'geni.usrt' amply stimu- lated by his great popularity. Authors of the essays collec- ted in the volume under review, however, are sophisticated and well-informed academic criti.cs, whose editor urges prof essors of literature to inform themselves similaily and to broaden the Book Reviews 289

arbitrary limits of their theories which exclude Burns .. Ex­ cellent. Burns has been shamefully neglected by colleges and universities. But, while academic sponsorship and criticism is a valid and valuable activity, it tends to "confuse the brains" of general readers, including studen ts, and to put them off. So straightforward a poet as Burns is best enjoyed fresh from the cask. His general readership would be greatly helped by broadly representative and well-edited handy editions, with simple, sound biographical essays, marginal glosses, and plain prefatory notes. And it should be noted that Burns no longer enjoys the immediacy he once did. His politics, for example, the hypocritical Kirk tyranny which infuriated him, and the op­ pressive class structure which galled him, have faded into his­ tory. His work has become part of our notable literary heri­ tage, and we must be concerned with what he means, as well as with what he meant. But, ironically, as knowledge of Burnshas improved, his popularity in Britain and America has declined. In the , however, where he enjoys great favor in translation, he continues to be given a warm, romantic presen­ tation, sentimental and carefully censored, much as in our nineteenth century, with emphasis on his social oppression, humanitarianism, and revolutionary politics. The nine essays in the present volume vary widely. Two are reprinted: Thomas Crawford's on the epistles, from his Burns: A study of the Poems and Songs (1965); and James Kinsley's "The Music of the Heart," from Renaissance Studies~ VIII (1964). Crawford restates and analyzes the themes and points in Burns' epistles, emphasizing relationships and contrasts, and making at least one happily ironic transposition into modern terms. He equates the "rattling squad" of the "Epistle to " with the present "iconoclastic youth (not the angry young men of the middle classes, but those who make the street and cof­ fee-bar their rendezvous)" and who "represent Life and Libido and the Horn of Plenty while the ordinary suburbanite worship­ per of the god in the garage stands for death, debility, and the crucifixion of essential humanity." It would have been useful to find included in the volume, also, John C. Weston's "Robert Burns' Use of the Scots Verse-Epistle Form," (Philo­ logical Quarterly, XLIX, 1970). James relates Eighteenth Century preoccupation with the primitive origins of poetry as an outburst of feeling to its interest in Scottish folk song, thus leading up to Burns's famous passage on Scots' song from his Commonplace Book in which he "expresses the antiquarian interest, the patriotic pride, and the response to simplicity and passion" of which Kinsley has been speaking. He goes on to point out Beattie's "crucial passage ••. on the poetic interpretation of music in 290 BOOK REVIEWS song," and the view of poetry as the interpreter rather than the initiator. This essay has become a classic statement of much in Burns' background and purpose. G. Ross Roy presents a somewhat limited view of Burns as he emerges in his letters and journals, but gives much interesting information about the letters, which he is editing for the Clarendon Press (a revision of Ferguson's 1931 edition). Ian Campbell pursues the relationship between Burns' assured position in his community, his reception and manner in Edinburgh, and his taking readers into his community in such poems as "Death and Doctor Hornbook" and "Tam o'Shanter." He reaches a conclusion, relating especially to "Hornbook," that "by a nice balance of provincial and national, Burns has shown that he can be national, and international, in a poem which seems at first sight confined to satire of the most local vari­ ety. And this, in Burns' successful poems, is a strong argu­ ment in favor of granting him the international stature as poet which seems increasingly to be regarded as his by right." Alexander Scott, after noting the high critical esteem in which Burns' satires are now held, examines reasons why the poet published only four, three in the edition and one more in the 1787 Edinburgh, but The TWa Herds, Holy Willie's Prayer, Address of Beelzebub, and The Kirk's Alarm, not at all. Publication of the first three of these in the Kilmarnock, and the last elsewhere, might well have brought on actions for libel, as Scott points out, but he urges also that publication of The TWa Herds and Holy Willie's Prayer could have so infuri­ ated the Machline Kirk Session as to prompt a prosecution of Burns for bigamy had they known of his secret marriage to Mary Campbell while still married to . The second mar­ riage is said to be evidenced by a document, uncited but pre­ sumably the which Burns gave Mary with inscriptions and marked passages, cryptic and uncertain evidence at best. Per­ haps of an intention and maybe of an adjuration. Scott goes on to emphasize that Burns could have defended himself from a charge of bigamy only by swearing that Jean had no claim on him whatsoever, which he could easily have done. In the first place, she and her family had tried to annul his private mar­ riage to her in their own fashion, after which Burns had ap­ peared three times for rebuke by Mr. Auld, the minis­ ter, who had promised him a bachelor's certificate if he did. The first appearance was July 9, the third August 6, 1786. The Kilmarnock came out the end of July. An interesting item in Scott's essay is his account of a "near-vernacular" poem by Drummond of Hawthornden, "A Character of the Anti-Covenanter or Malignant," in the spirit of "Holy Willie's Prayer." John D. Baird examines, in the light of a changed literary Book Reviews 291 taste, those two dissimilar poets, Burns and Cowper, who ad­ mired each other and who were popular at the same time. He finds that both exploited poetry as a confessional mode, and appealed to the increasing tendency to think in terms of poetry and emotion rather than of poetry and thought, with an empha­ sis on the uniqueness of the individual, and a concern with content more than form. Both poets deal with the moral degen­ eration of their age and present the rural husbandman as the pattern of moral excellence. Burns, moreover, dramatizes moral significance as found in particular action. "It is, indeed, in 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' that Burns appears most clear­ ly as the spokesman of his age," further evidence that he was very much a man of his time. A fresh and provocative essay. in "Robert Burns and Jacobite Song" assembles abundant evidence to support his conclusion that "Burns was able to respond to and to capture a great number of the variety of moods evoked in Scottish breasts by the Jacobite movement, and that in creating, rewriting, altering and collecting Jacob­ ite songs he gave Jacobite songs in Scotland a new lease of life." David Murison opens his essay on "The Language of Burns" by tracing briefly the gradual separation of Scots and English, the decline of Scots as a language for serious prose writing, and the linguistic dualism that developed in Scottish conver­ sation. With the increasing prestige of English, educated Scotsmen grew more and more familiar with the English poets, and all church, legal, and professional discourse in Scotland came to be carried on in English. But the "element which is the soul of Scotland, of the folk and their lore, their daily lives, their superstitions, their delight in the fields and woods, ... in banks and braes and running water so characteris­ tically Scottish, their shrewd mother-wit, their proverbs," continued to be expressed in the pithy forceful Scottish tongue. "It is in fact in the blending of the two strains in the Scot­ tish heritage, the intellectual and the traditional, that Burns and his poetry stand out as the voice of Scotland." He was familiar with the important English writers, and had been drilled in English grammar and usage. But he was also soaked in the native lore and songs. Murison develops this theme with particular concern for the varied sources of Burns' words, his mingling of the English and Scots as suited his various pur­ poses and themes, and his song writing, and comes to the con­ clusion that his "ability to fix in the vivid concrete forms of ordinary experience a universal truth is of course Burns' strongest suit and the essential secret of his genius and popu­ larity." "It was sound instinct in him that made him go for simplicity, and marry the language of feeling with that of 292 BOOK REVIEWS thought by conceiving both in the most concrete terms." This essay richly increases critical perception of Burns' achieve­ ment as a poet. Cedric Thorp Davie is that rarity among critics of Burns' songs, a trained musician thoroughly familiar with the songs. In "Robert Burns, Writer of Songs," after saying of his two notable predecessors, J. C. Dick and James Kinsley, "There is little concerning the provenance of the songs that has not been discovered and set forth by these two scholars," Davie offers technical corrections for the work of each, and then proceeds to aesthetic criticism, which Dick's "enthusiasm tended to blunt," and which Kinsley rather avoids. There is extensive and detailed comparison of airs with the words which Burns provided to interpret them, careful discussion of the use of Scots and English in the lyrics, and an examination of Burns' knowledge of music, with tribute to his skill and recognition of a few difficulties. The essay closes with full attention to Burns' relations with James Johnson and George Thomson, and the results both favorable and unfavorable of these relations in the published songs. Davie's criticism leads to a much ful­ ler understanding of Burns' purpose and accomplishment in song. Would that a widely representative selection of the songs, with well-edited music, were available, and a good album of recordings sung simply to simple accompaniments. It would be stimulating now for a practicing poet of stand­ ing, widely familiar with Burns' poetry and its background, to discuss his general mastery of his art, and his limitations. "For," as Burns wrote Thomson, "a man in the way of his trade may suggest useful hints that escape men of much superior parts & endowments in other things." A few intrusions. (p. 1) Burns' death resulted from an infectious disease which was not the result of hard work as an adolescent. (p. 2) Dr. came from Annan, Dum- friesshire. (p. 2) The Muses of CaLedonia is the title of a specific book published after Burns' death. A present tendency to cover Burns' bawdry under this title is confusing. (p. 22) Hrs. Dunlop apparently ordered a dozen copies of the Kilmarnock edition--(Thornton, Currie, 260n). (p. 30) Burns wrote to George Thomson, "Your Book wiLL be the Standard of Scots for the (Ferguson, II, 162, April 1793). (p. 35) Burns' friend Alexander Cunningham was not a Writer to the Signet--(ChronicLe, 1933, 97).

ROBERT T. FITZHUGH CraryviL New York Book Reviews 293

Ian Campbell. Tlwmas Carlyle. London. Hamish Hamilton. 1974. 210 pp. £4,25.

John Clubbe, ed. Carlyle and His Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of Charles Riop~d Sanders. Durham, N. C. Duke Univer- sity Press. 1976. 371 pp. $15.75.

John Clubbe, ed. TWo Reminisoences of Thomas Carlyle. Dur­ ham, N. C. Duke University Press. 1974. 145 pp. $6.75.

In his 1838 essay on Scott, Thomas Carlyle remarked that no one "lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving of­ fence," Ian Campbell's Tlwmas Carlyle and John Clubbe's edi­ tions of Carlyle and His Contemporaries and Two Reminisoenoes of Thomas Carlyle in different ways point out the kind of el­ bow room Carlyle found in his world and show the kinds of "jostling" he seemed to relish. To speak, as I intend here, of the Carlyle that these three books present is not to sug­ gest that the books will appeal equally to the same readers. Campbell's is an introductory, largely biographical work that generously refers readers with more specialized interests to Clubbe's volumes. Carlyle and His Contemporaries contains six­ teen contributions by distinguished Carlylean and Victorian scholars. With all new essays, this book brings together some of the finest studies of Carlyle's thinking and writing and some of the most thorough treatments of particular connections among Victorian contemporaries yet to appear. TWo Reminisoen­ ces of Thomas Carlyle, a slimmer volume, publishes for the first time Carlyle's annotated copy of Friedrich Althaus' 1886 essay on Carlyle and also includes Carlyle's brief reminis­ cence of Adam and Archibald Skirving. whom he recalled from his early Edinburgh years. It is the Carlyle of that period that we may better under­ stand from Campbell's Thomas Carlyle, a book that had its be­ ginnings in a 1970 Edinburgh dissertation, "Thomas Carlyle and Edinburgh, 1809-1834." Campbell draws effectively on the early volumes of the Duke-Edinburgh Carlyle letters and also uses in­ teresting material concerning the Burgher Church in which Car­ lyle's parents hoped he would join the ministry. There is a straightforward account of what Carlyle experienced as the son of a strong-willed and devout father, and it becomes clear that family, church, and education were strong early determinants of Carlyle's character. Linking the biography and Carlyle's writings by making close application to Sarto~ Resartus, Camp­ bell suggests that James Carlyle's "whole world-philosophy is wistfully what his son seeks." 294 BOOK REVIEWS

Fourteen short chapters give a terseness to this book, and to divide Carlyle's long career into decade segments for five of these chapters is to turn away from the more naturally structured discussions of early chapters that range from "Childhood" and "University" through "Uncertainty," "Romance," and "Marriage" to life at Craigenputtoch and London. The early chapters describe the conditions of those long early years, that Scots heritage and series of false starts so of­ ten generalized but seldom outlined with Campbell's clarity. This work is at its best in its portrayal of how the loneli­ ness of six years on Scotland's moors produced the shorter pieces that pointed Carlyle's thinking toward a masterpiece, Sartor Resartus. And also those years brought times of in­ tellectual and spiritual strain--an experience of genuine ro­ mantic ambivalence toward the value of solitude. Not surpris­ ingly, the Carlyles enjoyed the company that made its way to Craigenputtoch farm, and they gladly journeyed to Edinburgh for reunions with friends. Campbell gives a fascinating ac­ count of the move to London and the establishment of the Chel­ sea household. Although subsequently he adds little to Thea Holme's The Carlyles at Home, Campbell manages to mention "the trivia which made up the rich comic texture of life in the home of the Sage of Chelsea." In his final chapter, "Carlyle: A Picture," Campbell sum­ marizes the major points of Carlyle's thoughts, mentioning once again the strength of his religious heritage, his empha­ sis on action, the imperative of worldly order, and the need for heroes. Yet even in so broadly surveying, the chapter notes changes in Carlyle's thinking, pointing out, for instance, the increasingly secular nature of his religious views. This book's occasional forays into some of the more complex ideo­ logical and biographical problems may be of less positive value for the reader approaching Carlyle through this intro­ ductory study. The Froude controversies (more fully and imagi­ natively considered in Carlyle and His Contemporaries), espe­ cially the puzzling aspects of the Carlyles' domestic life, and the might-right issue all call forth a nagging defensive­ ness from Campbell. It is less a question of the biographer's right or wrongheadedness than of whether an introductory sur­ vey need argue positions that call for far more supportive discussion than these pages permit. Here, as in much of Thomas Carlyle, it seems that Ian Campbell has more to say about his subject than his survey format provides, but readers searching for beginnings to their own understandings of Carlyle should be grateful for Campbell's concisely stated book. We need turn only to the first essay in Carlyle and His Contemporaries to find Campbell extending his study. Here, in Book Reviews 295

"Carlyle's Religion: The Scottish Background," he shows the reasoning behind Carlyle's craving for belief in an age of in­ creasing unbelief and finds "the message of his religious be­ lief is the reestablishment of an epoch of belief. or trust and faith in a doubting age." As subsequent essays by Car­ lisle Moore, K. J. Fielding, and Edward Spivey find through considerations of Carlyle and Goethe as Scientist, Carlyle and the Saint-Simonians, and Carlyle and the Logic-Choppers, Car­ lyle's belief, faith, and trust were jostled by the various intellectual and spiritual interests of his day. One of the fine qualities of Clubbe' s editorial work is that this arrange­ ment of studies begins with issues Carlyle himself faced and extends toward some of the personalities with whom he inevi­ tably jostled elbows. Two of the Carlyle and His Contemporaries essays--JanetRay Edwards' "Carlyle and the Fictions of Belief" and John Clubbe' s "Grecian Destiny"--seem worthy of inclusion among the best modern Carlyle scholarship. Edwards discusses both the nature of Carlyle's vision and the forms of his expression in writ­ ings from Sartor Resartus to Past and Present. She finds him possessing a modern consciousness of inner time yet in his works applying unique vision to "a whole range of [obviously time-bound) social life." Here, through creating what Edwards calls fiction of belief, Carlyle emerges as the powerful liter­ ary jostler, elbowing himself to the front of a crowded liter­ ary stage. But it is not by dramatic or novelistic modes alone that he makes his way. Edwards shows that by the time of Past and Present he draws from the strengths of more con­ ventional genres: "To bring into being a coherent, inhabited universe, without recourse to sequential narrative, he em­ ployed a stunningly diverse potpourri of fictions and facts." Clubbe, in his collection's final essay, studies Froude's biographical artistry, examining his presentation and inter­ preting the psychology behind his method of presentation. Those familiar with even the general nature of Froude's con­ troversial biography will find here an intriguing study of the work and of the biographer. And what emerges is not "the" final answer but rather a fresh view of how literary distor­ tion occurs in Froude. Club be finds that Froude's portraits are often "true as far as they go, but the models which in­ spired them--Oedipus and Iphigenia as well as Una, Gloriana, the Red Cross Knight, and the others--in part predetermine their outcomes." Clubbe details Froude's frequent use of Greek tragedy in dramatizing the Carlyles' life. Froude, Clubbe argues, was thus able to see "some of the complex ironies of Carlyle's tragic fate in a perspective similar to that which led Freud to formulate his famous [Oedipus] theory." 296 BOOK REVIEWS

Clubbe's careful work gives a more imaginative and literary context to the Froude-Carlyle question than I had thoughtpos­ sible. Moreover, this study shows how such a major literary and intellectual force as Carlyle stimulated a biographer's imagination to rank Carlyle the man among great Classical and Renaissance characters. So approached, Froude's treatment of Carlyle ceases to be a mere chronicle of tactlessness, for as C1ubbe concludes, the Froude portraits gain from their great models "tremendous psychological life and a tragic reverber­ ation of their own." Carlyle and His Conte.rnporaries gives us these outstanding critical essays, and the entire volume is of high quality with an editorial coherence not always apparent in other such col­ lections. There is Michael Goldberg's interesting study of the reception of Pamphlets, Richard A1tick's dis- cussion of "Topicality as Technique" in Past and Present, and G. B. Tennyson's wide-ranging examination of the backhanded tributes accorded Carlyle by parodists attracted by his A number of essays consider particular points of contact be­ tween Carlyle and such people as Arnold, the Leweses, Tro1- lope, Ruskin, Meredith, and Browning. A reading of the entire volume alerts us to Carlyle's centrality in nineteenth-century literature and, less directly, shows how far he had moved from those lonely Scottish years. There are no studies of and Dickens, Carlyle and Emerson, and none exclusively of Carlyle and Mill (although Mill gets some attention in Spivey's "Carlyle and the Logic-Choppers"). Because considerable atten­ tion has been paid elsewhere to these relationships (two books on Carlyle and Dickens in the early 1970's), the omissions are not grave. Moreover, Campbell's Thomas Carlyle offers some indication of the importance of Carlyle's relationships with contemporaries less well known than those mentioned in the Clubbe essays. For instance, there are the opposed figures of Edward Irving and John Sterling, both friends of Carlyle, both devout men. Irving became an image of genius gone astray, and although Campbell quotes a letter in which Carlyle claims that he will never permit "any cloud, or grudge" to come be­ tween himself and Irving, Carlyle later in Reminiscences noted the finality of the break between them. As Campbell points out, Carlyle could not hold with Irving's increasingly rabid theology, but he did retain warm memories of the companionship Irving had provided in early years. And although Campbell does not develop the contrast, it is evident that Sterling, whose life Carlyle published in 1851, offered the counter-image of a gentle piety. Carlyle's position here is informative about his own nature; uncompromising when he met intolerable patterns of thought or belief, he did not compromise claims of Book RevieUJs 297 friendship that extended from his past. More directly than Campbell's book or than any of the essays in Carlyle and His Contemporaries, Two Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle portrays Carlyle the man responding to others' views of him and recalling a brief encounter from his past. This volume prints the personal copy of Friedrich Althaus' Unsere Zeit essay on Carlyle that Carlyle annotated and also for the first time publishes Carlyle's belief reminiscence of Adam and Archibald Skirving. As Clubbe says, we have in effect a new reminiscence, largely on Carlyle himself, written at a time when he was working on his other reminiscences. Carlyle's comments about Althaus' reading of his works are especially useful because they show Carlyle reacting to the frequent assumption that he blindly associated might and right. A note of self-deprecating humor is sounded in Carlyle's com­ ment, "What floods of nonsense here have been and are spoken & thought (what they call thinking) about this poor maxim of Carlyle's!" The simultaneous presence of Carlyle and Althaus on the printed page gives the text a dialogue effect. On occasion Carlyle takes exception to a single word or phrase or utters an appropriately germanic "Ach!" Throughout he is annoyed by Althaus' efforts to put him in particular literary or social contexts, and he soundly refutes the notion that he was accep­ ted early in Scottish and English literary circles. In a brief note at the beginning, Carlyle claims to be anno­ tating Althaus in order to set straight errors he fears will crop up as various people attempt his biography, an effort he considers futile. For all the exception Carlyle takes to the commentator's categorizations, it may come as a surprise to find no severe marginal annotation to the image Althaus has of Carlyle as the author of Frederick, a man to be taken

exactly as he is, with all his strengths and weaknesses; a powerful, unique personality, and an original, uninhibited intellect, creating and observing according to his own rules and one to whom more than the usual criteria are needed for judgment. Thus he stands, neither seeking friendship nor fearing hostility, a rugged, weather-beaten and powerful Titan who dwells on his rocky heights and against whom the breakers of the sea and the rain and lightning of heaven rage in vain. His is not a logical, analytical mind but one essentially imaginative and in­ tuitive; he is as much poet and humorist as historian, as much filled with the same universal compassion for the smallest as for the greatest life. 298 BOOK REVIEWS

Although a few paragraphs later Carlyle challenges some of Althaus' notions about Frederick, he lets this biographical summation stand, perhaps because it is so explicitly an effort to describe the man "exactly as he is," a claim to truthfulness that Carlyle could best respect with silence. The more brief Skirving reminiscence shows an even older Carlyle yet imaginatively active at his pen portraiture. Years earlier Skirving had given the Carlyles a mahogany drawing-board that they converted into a tabletop. The sight of the object in later life re~alls for Carlyle the "wild man" he briefly knew and now considers "part of the sacred VANISHED LAND." The following reminiscences of a single meeting some forty years earlier with the elderly Skirving remains one of Carlyle's more vivid pen portraits. His description of this man's face may serve as a self-portrait of the aging Carlyle: "Such a face as you would still more rarely see. Eagle-like; nose hooked like an eagle's bill, eyes still with something of the eagle's flash in them; squarish prominent brow, under-jaw ditto, cheeks & neck thin, sensitively wrinkled,--brow, cheeks, jaw, chin all betokening impetuosity, rapidity, delicacy, and the stormy fire of genius not yet hidden under the ashes of old age." To have begun and concluded this review with Carlyle's auto­ biographically loaded comments about other people provides a neat symmetry, and it is necessary to add but few words. Over the past century Carlyle has been critically manhandled, ig­ nored, and now most justly revived. The views of him made available through the varied efforts of today's Carlyle schol­ ars restore a sense of the man and of the age in which he felt himself jostled. Elbow his way as he did, his was a life that itself jarred, nudged, and prodded his contemporaries' thoughts and feelings. It should be no surprise that these books indi­ cate that he engaged in gentle self-deprecation and fierce humor, needed companionship and solitude, and despaired in many loving acts. To many of his contemporaries he was Sage, Titan, Friend, and Enigma.

RICHARD J. DUNN University of Washington. Book Reviews 299

Arnand Chitnis. The . London. Croom Helm. Totowa, N. J. Roman and Littlefield. [1976]. 279 pp. $17.50

The Scottish enlightenment is a field of study in which I have done very little reading. I write, therefore, not as a spec­ ialist but as one intensely interested in the interaction be­ tween social and cultural history, and also as one, in Dr. Johnson's great remark, grateful to anyone who tells me some­ thing I did not know. Briefly, I found the book of great in­ terest, carefully though not brilliantly done, and, to judge by the Notes and the Bibliography, fully and richly researched. Instructively, and pointing to the probable future, the right­ hand margins are not rectified, and the proof-reading, which is not of professional book-publishing standards (though, to be sure, those standards are nowadays rarely met, even by some notable American university presses), gets worse towards the end, suggesting haste and weariness and the leaving of final proof-reading up to the author. It is evident that scholarly authors must be responsible for the proofing of their books; no longer can we depend upon commercial houses to do a good job. As for university presses, such an author is well-advised to examine recent books by the press publishing his MS and re­ spond accordingly. It must be admitted, of course, that uni­ versity presses rarely have the funds to hire first-class editors and proof-readers, and that it is increasingly diffi­ cult to find anyone who can spell. In his Preface, Chitnis states that his book "is not intend­ ed as a definitive study but to summarise the research of the 'sixties and early 'seventies and, hopefully, to interest a wider audience in its results." Well, he certainly has inter­ ested me. For of course the subject is of high intrinsic in­ terest. Great men and great achievements came from Scotland in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and in the universities great teaching, judging from this and other accounts I have run across. The first major problem Chitnis takes up is the building of Edinburgh New Town. Here I was with him from the start, for I own and have read A. J. Youngson's The Making of Classical Edinburgh 1750-1840, one of the most delightful and instructive studies of architectural history I have ever run across. And at this point Chitnis establishes his first con­ tention, the distinction between the improving spirit and the Scottish Enlightenment proper, to which he wishes to give a narrow definition. Edinburgh New Town was not, he feels a product of the Enlightenment but rather of improving. I am not entirely convinced by this distinction, but it is useful enough in isolating the intellectual activities, social, writing, teaching, publishing, from the commercial improvement, the 300 BOOK REVIEWS catalyst for which was the Union. I retain a feeling, from Chitnis' book itself, that though the distinction can be made, in the larger sense of the European Enlightenment, and in the larger sense of socia-cultural history, improving and Enlight­ enment were closely allied and had the same source. Or, both were controlled by the same ideology, not necessarily that of Calvinism but rather that of the Renaissance, the ideology re­ sponsible for the emergence in the 16th and 17th centuries of modern science. As for a second point, the question of how such an extra­ ordinarily impressive manifestation of the European Enlighten­ ment appeared in a remote and backward cultural province--his answer to that I also find convincing. First, he points out the close relations between Scotland and France, of long stand­ ing, and between Scotland and Holland. Second, he sees the Scottish educational system, under the control of a Calvinist church, as the intellectual engine that made the Scottish En­ lightenment possible. To this day, an educated Scott will ar­ gue about anything, whether he agrees with you or not. In this connection he finds both the explanation of T. C. Smout and that of H. Trevor-Roper unsatisfactory, and though I have not read what they have to say on the subject, I find Chitnis' dis­ agreements reasonably convincing. The notion that the Kirkwas always interested in the social aspect of religion, thought, and morals, and was still active until the late I found especially instructive. From my point of view I found the discussions of the social life of Edinburgh--the clubs, the dinners, the taverns--parti­ cularly interesting. I would offer a further factor, though by no means a full explanation, of how the Scottish Enlighten­ ment came about. Edinburgh was a small city. The educated men of the population were trained in rational and subtle dis­ putation, and lived in an environment of easy and frequent ran­ dom interaction. The combination of smallness plus an intel­ lectualized upper and middle-class repeated the conditions of the cities of Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A city, in this sense, it has been argued, cannot have a popu­ lation greater than about 70 or 80 thousand. The crucial de­ mands are that the members of the ideological institutions-­ intellectual, educational, and artistic--live within walking distance of one another, and that there be numerous points of random assembly within the same walking area. Edinburgh met those conditions. It was not merely that the city contained the right kinds of social institutions; it was equally impor­ tant that the city was small.

MORSE PECKHAM University of South Carolina. Book Reviel'}s 301

Hilary L. Rubinstein. Luckless: James, Duke Hamilton, 1606-1649. Totowa, N. J. Rowan and Littlefield. 1976. 307 pp. $15.00.

The House of Hamilton is of ancient vintage. A Lowland of Anglo-Norman origin, it began with Walter of Hamildoun or Hamildone, Northumberland, in the thirteenth cen­ tury. In Scotland more people are named after places than places are named for people but in the southwest along the River Clyde there is a burgh and a parish which bears this name. From a lofty crag overlooking the there is Cadzow Castle and on the Isle of Arran, Bothwell Castle, while Lanark­ shire boasts Hamilton Palace. !!The haughty Hamiltons," as they were called, were with Robert the Bruce and later, with the Stuarts--the Scottish spelling of Stewart has not The first Lord Hamilton married the Princess Mary, sister of James II. Those who did not like the Hamil tons, and there were many, said that they were "loyalest (to the crown) when they were nearest to the throne." Self-interest and ambition for advancement appear early in the pages of the history of the family. And advance they did--Baron of Cadzow, Earl of Arran, a French title, Ie due de Chatelherault, and Marquis. It is with the third Marquis and first Duke of Hamilton and Earl of Cambridge that this study is concerned. We meet him as a very young man in his palace, content to dwell within his domain. But he received a summons from his King to go to White­ hall. This is a command which can only be for a short time. With great reluctance he complied and history's verdict has been that no more disastrous event could have occurred than for Hamilton to have become adviser of Charles Stuart. Captain Luckless is about these two men. First, some com­ ments on the Stuarts are in order. Upon the death of Eliza­ beth I, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the nearest Protestant heir to the English throne, became James I of England. He was a learned and fastidious man and was con­ vinced of his divine right to be king. According to Eric Link­ later, Andrew Melville, the great successor of John Knox, told James that there were two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. One of the kings was the Christ Jesus whose kingdom was the kirk in which James "was not a king, nor a lord nor a head, but a member." James' reaction to such lese was to en- gage in a bout with wine or, more often, to dash headlong in the chase of a stag until he had cooled off. This practice of taking no action at the time stood him in stead; he died in bed. To his son he made his views of the kirk quite clear-- " ••• ye shall never find with any or Border thieves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile perjuries, than 302 BOOK REVIEWS these (the Scottish Calvinists) fanatic spirits." And so the stage for Charles' conflict with the Covenanters was set. Charles lacked the resilience of his father. He also lacked many other essential qualities for a successful monarch. Ob­ stinate and ignorant of history and of the world about him, his view extended no further than the prerogatives of a divine­ right ruler. As David J. Brandenburg put it he "grew up in an atmosphere of assertive tactlessness" and could not understand that the temper of the time had changed from "humble petition to outspoken criticism." He could not distinguish between his moral and political rights and his narrow mind failed to com­ prehend that expediency could be interpreted as treason. Good­ wyn Smith says that he did not look like the princely paint­ ings of Van Dyck. He was "undersized, he stammered and he had a red nose." His conviction that he was the Lord's annointed was not enough or appropriate for the seventeenth century. That he clung to the dictum that "a Subject and a Sovereign are clean different things" was no help in a world where the people wished the monarch to identify with them and that his chief confidant and adviser was Hamilton only assured ~is tra­ gic demise. Such was the author of the English version of what the Russians called "the Time of Troubles." And now Hamilton, whom Mrs. Rubinstein calls the "anti-hero" of this momentous upheaval in English and Scottish history. As noted above history has passed its verdict. The general his­ torian has dismissed him with a word--knave or fool. Others who have written of the period have not treated him much bet­ ter. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who knew Hamilton wrote " ••• he (Hamilton) had more enemies and fewer friends than any other man in court ... ". Rosalind Mitchison put it very simply-­ " ... he was never fully trusted by anyone ... " and that his por­ trait in armor and the Van Dyck pose represented " ••• two cen­ turies of hesitation." John Buchan concluded that " ••• this was no man to ride the ford with •• ,". And finally S. R. Gardiner found him totally devoid of intellectual and moral strength, that he sought to avoid major problems and had no religious or political convictions. The cry of the Covenanters to "stand by Jesus Christ" frightened him. With this summation of his­ torical opinion in mind one approaches this book with great expectations and even hope. What will now be found? Mrs. Rubinstein carefully marks out the area she is to cover, and she holds fast to her plan, It is amazing that so many sources still exist and that we can have an account almost as if "she were there." But this plan is strictly limited to Charles and Hamilton and to the immediate and specific inci­ dents and events in which they were involved. In almost a James Joyce manner, the movements of these two are faithfully Book Reviews 303 covered in meticulous detail. Hamilton at court, Charles' money problems with the English Parliament, the seemingly end­ less negotiations with the Scottish Parliament, Assembly and the kirk, and finally the two parts of the Civil War, are all recorded with particular concern for the role played by Hamil­ ton as adviser, military commander, courtier and friend. And it is a dismal story. The author has proved the verdict of history more so, if that is possible or needed. On character analysis of the two chief participants in this drama, with very few others, Mrs. Rubinstein is at her best. Here is indeed a ready-prepared script for the dramatist--if he can make the audience identify and sympathize with these two "precious persons." The general reader will not have the patience to stay with this text and the historian will wish for a broader brush. All periods of history are important and none more so than the seventeenth century. The political and religious conflicts of the time brought to the fore some of the most interesting personali ties in all recorded history. There are also the rise of mercantilism and colonialism which created a new commercial class and struck a blow at feudalism. In this account we catch a glimpse of Gustavus Adolphus because of Hamilton's disastrous foray into Germany. It is suggested that Gustavus Adolphus did not trust Hamilton but we are not told why. Caught up in the vortex of European conflict is Elizabeth Stuart, sister of Charles, who is to be the ancestor of the future Hanoverian line. But apparently Charles and Hamilton either had too many problems of their own or they just let her fend for herself. Mention is made of Henry of Navarre, father of Henrieta Marie, the wife of Charles. There is much of the role of the kirk in the struggle with Charles but it would be interesting to know, why it was that Calvinism was so success­ ful in Scotland? And how does one reconcile the seeming para­ dox of Presbyterian democracy and the feudal Clan system? Finally, Oliver Cromwell and his Ironsides appear as if from nowhere. The island fastness of England has been as much over­ done in European history as the frontier in America. Accept­ ing the fact of its significance and importance does not mean that the King of England can indulge in the luxury of a civil war and not be affected or concerned by what lies twenty-two miles away. In fine, a broader horizon is needed, Charles and Hamilton however, notwithstanding. But the author will not be turned aside. She adheres to the plan of her work no matter the limitations or restrictions. (One cannot help but think of Antonia Fraser's Mary, Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill's Marlborough and Robert Blake's Disraeli.) She pays her respects to Academe. 304 BOOK REVIEWS

Footnotes are gathered together and placed at the end of the book. The bibliography, considering the scope of the work, is quite good. There are two appendices and spot checks of the index indicate a satisfactory reference tool. At the conclusion of the text is an Epilogue. This is the summation and analysis of the qualities, foibles and frailties of the "anti-hero." At first, Mrs. Rubinstein appears hesi­ tant and one fears that Hamilton has rubbed off. But she comes through courageously and honestly. While there is nothing new it has never before been so carefully documented, presented and analyzed. The sobriquet, if such it was, of Luck­ less, must mean: Luck is not for those who stand and wait but rather serves those who make things happen. The dust jacket ironically states that "Hamilton's contri­ butions to the politics of his time ..• were immense." This re­ minds one of the story the author tells of his visit to a for­ tune teller. He was told that Charles would be executed and that he (Hamilton) would be the successor. For a short time he experienced visions of grandeur; it seems that the fortune teller meant that Charles would be executed and that Hamilton would be next! A fitting quotation from Sir Walter Scott con­ cludes this depressing tale:

That was him that lost his head at London-­ folk said that it wasna a very gude ane, but it was aye a sair loss to him, puir gentleman.

MAXCY R. DICKSON MaryZand.